Evaluating the effectiveness of two behaviour change techniques designed to improve safe food-handling among consumers

Purpose Safe food-handling media campaigns have been successful at improving some safe food-handling behaviours among consumers. However, little is known about whether specific mechanisms of change, such as habit and perceived risk, can improve the effectiveness of safe food-handling campaign materials. Consequently, this study aims to determine if habit and risk-based behaviour change techniques can improve the effectiveness of safe food-handling media campaign materials. Design/methodology/approach A prospective experimental design was used. Participants completed baseline measures of habit, perceived risk and behaviour before watching two short safe food-handling video advertisements. Participants were then randomly assigned to complete either a habit or a perceived risk-based behaviour change technique task. Two weeks later, participants completed the baseline measures again. A series of multivariate analyses of variance were conducted to determine differences over time between the two groups in relation to habit, perceived risk and behaviour. Findings Significant increases in habit (p < 0.001), perceived risk (p < 0.001) and behaviour (p < 0.001) among all participants were found over the study period. However, there were no significant differences in these changes between participants who completed either task for the majority of the target behaviours and related constructs. This suggested that both habit and risk-based behaviour change techniques may help improve campaign materials; however, future research is needed to determine these effects in comparison to a non-active control group. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to compare the use of two behaviour change techniques for improving safe food-handling health messaging materials. Future safe food-handling media campaigns would benefit from including habit and risk-based behaviour change techniques.